Monday, 10 August 2009

happy birthday to me! And fate steps up to deliver the printer's proof pages of me new book. I've cut the cover to fit around the loose bundle to give a better feeling of how the finished thing will present itself.

It's the same dimensions as From Hell, but 64 pages thicker:

Half a dozen pages show faults and errors, all my own, but I've caught them in time. One has to pay attention during the proofing stage.

Dear Mr. Campbell,The other good thing about today being your birthday: Even though I'm old enough to have grandchildren, I'll always be older than you. And that's a good thing...Happy birthday!Congratulations on another free trip around our star.Best wishes,Gordon SmithChico, CA.(born 8.11.52)ps. I just finished acquiring all 60 Bacchus books and am reading one a day. Today I will read #24. I am a huge fan of the old myths and wonder how I missed the Eyeball Kid and the Stygian Leech in all of my previous reading.....Thank you very much for the fun!

Bill- Errors? I'll tell you then you'll be sorry you asked. I scanned the pages in tiers, grayscale, assembled then sized then converted to bitmap. In many places I decided to replace a tier, but had to convert to bitmap before dropping onto the page since it was already bitmap. If I forgot to convert, the system did it automatically but used 'dither' instead of '50% threshold'. In these cases it was virtually impossible to spot them on the computer screen, I thought if I can't see it maybe it won't matter, but on the printers proofs I found that the blacks had a blotchy look and was able to locate the half dozen that had got away from me. Then I retrieved the original scan of the tier, converted to bitmap 50% threshold and dropped in over the incorrect one. If there are still any I missed when the book comes out.... keep it to yourself.

Happy birthday. Glad to see Alec will be in one book at long last, it'll sit nicely next to "The Complete Alec" which isn't really. Wish I still had a copy of the old Deadface book, if only for the Gaiman intro...

Eddie, just wondering if you have heard of the barnacle press websitehttp://www.barnaclepress.comIt has scans of a lot of old strips. I have been reading the Outbursts of Everett True, which remind me of you a little bit

Eddie, what hardcover edition of From Hell is that? The only ones I've ever seen are the original signed, limited edition which I couldn't get my hands on, and the newer Top Shelf hardcover with the ugly cover. Where can I get a copy of the one pictured? (You wouldn't happen to have any extra copies you'd be willing to part with for a pretty penny,do you?)

adumin-that's the Knockabout hardcover edition, British. Especially good because the pages ate sewn together, not glued. I wrote about it in my July 27 post.Get it direct from them or I expect amazon.co.uk